On Feb 3, 1:39*pm, BoobleStubble wrote:
"HD Radio: The Brand Extension Is Dead"

A theory that's gaining momentum is that our time is running out to
get the public interested in HD Radio. There have been numerous
letters to the editor in this very publication where readers compare
HD Radio to AM stereo technology. It sounded pretty good if you ever
got the chance to hear it, but so what?

Here's a news flash: Assuming the public can receive the signal, HD
Radio is not really about the technology. It's about the content.

AM stereo had a serious flaw: it lacked original content. Sure, the
music sounded better on AM stereo than standard AM radio, but FM had
already won that battle. Let's not make the same mistake with HD
Radio.

Niches

Four years ago, three things drove radio to create brand extensions
on
the then-new HD Radio dial: technology, paper diaries and laziness.
Many people don't understand this, so please permit me to offer an
explanation.

First, technology: The approach in the United States of creating
digital radio — on-band, in-channel — gave us HD-R channels next to
our main frequencies on the new receivers.

Next, paper diaries demanded we create brands that listeners could
recall to write down and hopefully confuse with our main channels, so
that we might actually improve our ratings.

Finally, it's much easier to create a format brand extension than a
totally different format. If the main channel was country, the next
HD
Radio channel was destined to be classic country. If the main channel
was new rock, the HD Radio channel would be classic rock.

Typically, the same program director had enough expertise in the
genre
to do the main channel and the brand extension. It's worked out great
for companies in terms of saving time and money. Sadly, it's done
little to excite the person we should care about: the consumer.

Certainly I know there are some stellar exceptions. For the most
part,
however, I advocate that the time has arrived to ditch HD Radio brand
extensions.

The ideas that interest me most are the ones that will get consumers
talking about HD Radio and purchasing receivers. Contrary to what
many
believe, they won't be buying receivers for the great sound quality.
They'll be buying those receivers because they can hear programs,
shows and formats for free that they can't get anywhere else.

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There's no question that there is an appetite for niche formats,
which
satellite radio has done an excellent job of serving. Brand
extensions
on HD Radio could easily be replaced by niche music stations: blues,
bluegrass, various forms of jazz, world music and acoustic/folk.
These
niche formats in themselves will certainly draw in listeners.
However,
because satellite radio had beaten HD Radio to the punch, it's
unlikely these niche formats will create much of a buzz in terms of
getting consumers talking or reporters blogging.

To create HD Radio formats that get people excited, we will have to
take chances not taken since long-haired kids played their own
records
on the new FM dial in 1967.

Here's another news flash: We will need new talent to create these
significantly different music and talk formats. We need young people
in our business who don't understand — or even care about — the
format
rules we have codified over the last 40 years.

Before you get scared, consider that if you are an FM HD Radio
station, you have multiple HD Radio channels. Can't you use one as a
format incubator? Maybe you try blocks of time on that one channel
with different concepts, until one emerges the winner by listener
demand.

I would be remiss if I did not also advocate — as I have in past
articles — that every company lease at least one HD Radio channel in
every major city to a university. Let their students play live music
and present classroom lectures and debates — things that used to
exist
on the early FM "community stations" that were gobbled up later by
religious broadcasters and NPR affiliates.

With our country's new political era and economic challenges, markets
may even be riper for innovation of this kind.

No budget for new content on your HD Radio channels? If that's the
case, let someone else take a chance with your digital spectrum.

Don't let your station atrophy by continuing to air that automated
brand extension … right up until the day you switch off the
transmitter because nobody is listening.

http://www.radioworld.com/article/74002

Bob - we already know about niche formats, don't we:

"Addressing The Long Tail: HD2s and HD3s for Fun and Profit"

"Analog radio cannot effectively serve The Long Tail. Broadcasters
have had huge success addressing the 80% with widely popular mass
market content pushed through our loud speakers. But our economic
structure won’t let us take advantage of the few consumers who like
reggae or death metal or comedy or mommy talk. You simply cannot
program niche formats on analog stations and make the numbers work –
listenership and revenue potential are too low to cover capital and
operating costs... So go ahead, grab that Long Tail. It will help
your
station, and help the industry."

http://tinyurl.com/66jb9s

"Harvard Business Review: Should You Invest in the Long Tail?"

"Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, argues that the sudden
availability of niche offerings more closely tailored to their tastes
will lure consumers away from homogenized hits. The 'tail' of the
sales distribution curve, he says, will become longer, fatter, and
more profitable. Elberse, a professor at Harvard Business School, set
out to investigate whether Anderson's long-tail theory is actually
playing out in today's markets. She focused on the music and home-
video industries -- two markets that Anderson and others frequently
hold up as examples of the long tail in action -- reviewing sales
data
from Nielsen SoundScan, Nielsen VideoScan, the online music service
Rhapsody, and the Australian DVD-by-mail service Quickflix. What she
found may surprise you: Blockbusters are capturing even more of the
market than they used to, and consumers in the tail don't really like
niche products much."

http://www.citeulike.org/user/mmkurth/article/2984768

"HD Radio's Booble and Bilk-o crank it up!"

"Briefly, it explicates the growing pains of High Definition
Television 'side channels' and how a couple of programming service
providers had already gone under due to those pesky financial
limitations. Translation: There was no money in it. Just because you
can have a HD TV side channels doesn’t mean they’ll do anything
positive for your bottom line."

http://tinyurl.com/by7wuj

"Radio: HD Radio's holiday horror"

"We already have too many radio stations on terrestrial AM and FM...
If every man, woman and child in this great country of ours had
complete and total access to HD Radio – it would obliterate the radio
industry. You’d have listeners spread out on to too many radio
stations for any one station to show effective reach and frequency.
Do
the math. This blue sky world for HD Radio would put all radio out of
business. No one station would have enough listeners to justify
advertising."

http://tinyurl.com/6omhpv

"Bonneville pulls iChannel Music"

"Bonneville has pulled the plug on its iChannel Music HD Network and
streaming. For the most part, it has replaced the HD multicast with
WorldBand Media content (brokered ethnic programming). iChannel
allowed indie bands to upload their music online for consideration...
We commend Bonneville for giving it a shot—it allowed radio to expose
a lot of new, unsigned indie bands from around the world. CC Radio's
eRockster HD2 format is still around at a good handful of stations
and
still outstanding. If that gets shuttered, a good bunch of us just
might be done with HD Radio listening altoghether."

http://www.rbr.com/radio/12113.html

"CLEAR CHANNEL PULLS THE PLUG ON SOME HD RADIO STATIONS"
February 2008

"After conducting a survey of 340 HD2 stations to determine their
programming needs, the folks at Clear Channel have dumped a number of
their HD Format Lab stations due to a lack of demand. According to
the
Clear Channel Format Lab website, 46 HD stations are left to carry,
including stations with names including 'Standing Room Only
Showtunes', 'Pride Radio', 'JokeJoke' and 'Wack Comedy'."

http://tinyurl.com/3w7vox

"CC Radio’s Format Lab gone?"
November 2008

"So bottom line, the Format Lab is no longer available on the web and
has cut some of its formats down to the most successful/desirable.
Thewww.iHeartMusic.comwebsite seems to only list the main audio streams
of CC stations--not multicast HD formats--but does offer a few off to
the side: erockster; Pride; Verizon New Music; Smooth Jazz; Real
Oldies; Slow Jams and New Country. There used to be something close
to
100 formats listed on the site."

http://www.rbr.com/radio/11252.html

Gosh, Bob - and you are a Harvard MBA Grad:

"Robert J. Struble, President and CEO"

"Bob earned his Bachelor's Degree in Chemical Engineering from MIT
where he was elected into the Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Xi engineering
honor societies, and an MBA from Harvard, where he graduated with
high
distinction as a Baker Scholar."

http://tinyurl.com/5jjujj

Any thoughts, Eduardo?

I'm more excited about free internet access in my car...
I'm more excited about addressable HD receivers where I can pick my
own playlist.....
Why listen to music some PD likes when you can pick your own.....
This is me turning the volume up on my ipod.. oh did I tell you. it
has virtually every song known to man... LMAO...
Listening to self serving Shawn & Rush radio makes me think I live on
mars...
Thankfully my radio came with an off button..
..